Stakeholders are affected by and can affect an organization and must be recognized and managed accordingly. Therefore, stakeholder relationships lie at the core of an organization and may include external relationships and internal relationships. Some examples of external relationships include customers/members, shareholders, suppliers, referral sources, distribution partners, financiers, government, labour unions and the wider community. Some examples of internal relationships include employees and other workgroups, units, functional areas, departments, etc. It is understandable that the complex process of initiating, developing and maintaining stakeholder relationships in a coordinated and timely manner should be central to the relative success and sustainability of an organisation.
Many parties are vitally interested in the status and relative health of stakeholder relationships including management, shareholders, financiers, government, market analysts and others. Indeed, a review of contemporary job descriptions demonstrates that stakeholder management prowess is viewed as an important prerequisite for managers across a broad spectrum of industries. Furthermore, there is great interest in attempting to predict the behavioural intentions of stakeholder groups, with a particular focus on two groups (customers and employees) due to their direct impact on financial results. Many organisations rely on stakeholder feedback systems to monitor performance and guide improvement efforts. These typically take the form of surveys of varying quality that focus on collecting data, often to determine ‘report card’ or single measures such as satisfaction, engagement or advocacy. In some cases, a practice has emerged whereby surveys are comprised of a single question. While the availability of any feedback must inherently provide some benefit to those who rely on the data, total reliance on a ‘report card’ metric such as a satisfaction score or an advocacy score to make critical decisions unrealistically over-estimates the actionability of the data. In other words, a single ‘report card’ measure has little utility in guiding effective managerial action and seriously imperils decisions concerning successful and sustainable stakeholder relationship management.
Actual stakeholder behaviours, such as buying a product or service or remaining an employee of an organization, are preceded by behavioural intentions which, in turn, are the product of a combination of direct and indirect experience(s) and attitudes (intangible variables) which represent the emotional bonds between a stakeholder and an organisation. Due to the ease with which ‘report card’ metrics can be generated and their seductive simplicity, managers frequently ignore or misunderstand the hierarchical and differentiating characteristics of each link in the chain of effects from stakeholder experience(s) and attitudes to behavioural intentions to actual behaviours. Therefore, stakeholder relationship metrics, such as satisfaction scores or recommend intention, fail to capture the real complexity of stakeholder relationships and the predictive capability available from carefully analysing the plurality of variables associated with stakeholder experience(s) and attitudes that, in turn, influence behavioural intentions of interest to organisations.
In a practical sense, whilst it may be of assistance to know what the most important stakeholder experience(s) and attitude(s) are in driving behavioural intentions, the ability to alter each experience and attitude may differ considerably for each organisation and stakeholder group in terms of relevance, practicality and cost. Furthermore, managers would appreciate some guidance as to the expected change in behavioural intentions and actual behaviours which will result from a proposed investment or activity to change a single or set of stakeholder experiences and attitudes.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome the shortcomings and disadvantages of existing methods, systems, and practices associated with the use of ‘report card’ metrics such as satisfaction scores and advocacy scores and to provide an improved framework, method, system and manner of manufacture for stakeholder relationship data collection, analysis and measurement which is capable of taking data and making projections about expected changes in behavioural intentions and actual behaviours should certain stakeholder experiences and attitudes, as identified by research (McHale 2004), be modified.